Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121672 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

The New York Times
`One of the handful of first-rate scientists who are popular writers. The
Origin of Life is one of his best works... If you are going to read only
one book on the origin of life, seriously consider this one'

John Gribbin, Independent
`Delightful...Davies succeeds not only in being provocative and
controversial, but in maintaining the rigorous scientific approach of the
physicist... a classic example of how to present a scientific case, and an
insight into the way good scientists work'

Washington Tiimes
`The best science writer either side of the Atlantic'

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking
One might think that by renaming a book "The Origin of Life", the writer is claiming to provide an answer to the ultimate question of how life started. While he supplies no definite answer as such, Davies both widens and deepens the debate on how life might have started. He demonstrates possible links between "inanimate" complex molecular structures and the simplest microbial lifeforms through steps such as self-assembly molecules. The importance of extremophiles at the start of the evolutionary chain is highlighted - an argument he uses to point out that life may have travelled through the solar system in rocks and comets. Although I was at first very sceptical about minute Martians "seeding" the Earth in this way, the author convinced me that this is a possibility worthy of consideration.

The book is very easily read as the science does not go too deep and there are extensive references for those wishing to go further. I would recommend Ward and Brownlee's "Rare Earth" for the reader wanting to delve deeper into the science. Generally though, "The Origin of Life" will appeal to anyone interested in evolution and astrobiology. All in all, a super book and well written!

Very well written, and exciting to read.
I found this book of Paul Davies's very lucid to read, and back in the summer it was one of the only books that I read in a single day. I remember being sat in the conservatory overheating with the greenhouse effect of the transparent roofing - it being a hot summer here in England - and perhaps this made my imagination drift more into what I was reading. But whatever, Davies's book, (originally published as the Fifth Miracle), certainly provided ripe sod for my imagination to bear fruits, (I think that for part of the time I was sitting under the table and fell asleep for an hour or so, dreaming of meteorites travelling from Mars to Earth and things; perhaps dreaming in the the middle or reading a book such as this isn't a bad idea, as the ideas get given a dry run through the imagination, which may help to establish whether they are realistic or not). One Russian friend of mine commented that popular science writers are likely to try and sensationalise their work in order to make it more exciting, and I suppose that I cannot really deny that this is a valid comment, but I wouldn't really agree with it straight away either. It seems that Paul Davies is really serious about his theories here, such as the chance that life was transported from Mars to Earth, (or even vice versa), via meteorites being launched into the cosmogony with extremophiles on board, (bacteria that can withstand extreme conditions). I have read another Paul Davies book in full also, (About Time), so I can say that someone who reads Paul Davies would not at all be disappointed by the writing quality in The Origin of Life, and the imagination with which Paul delivers his theories, (and other established theory), to the reader. Paul adopts the academic position name or "Astrobiologist" for this book, which fits the theme of the book perfectly; I don't know if he has always called himself an astrobiologist or if he sometimes refers to himself as an astronomer. I would wholly recommend this book.